Пол Корнелл: The Ghosts of Christmas

Is this, what, post-natal depression? Or the first sign of me doing unto others what was done to me? A pushed-down anger that might come spilling out?

I don’t care what my one-year-older self wants me to do. She can’t know that much more than me. I need to know what this is.

Alice is asleep in her cradle. She’s so much bigger, so quickly, two years old! Again, that bursting of love into my head. That’s reassuring. Another year on, I’m still feeling that.

But the room… the room feels very different. Empty. There’s a tree, but it’s a little one. I make this body walk quickly through the rest of the house. The bathroom is a bit different, the bedroom is a bit different. Baby stuff everywhere, of course, but what’s missing? There’s… there’s nothing on that side of the room. I go back to the bathroom. There are no razors. No second toothbrush.

Where’s Ben?

I start looking in drawers, checking my email… but the password’s been changed. I can’t find anything about what’s happened. I search every inch of the house, desperate now, certain I’m going to find a funeral card or something. She knew this was going to happen to me, so wouldn’t the bitch have left one out in plain sight? Why doesn’t she want me to know? Oh please don’t be dead, Ben, please—!

I end up meaninglessly, uselessly, looking in the last place, under the bed.

And there’s a note, in my own handwriting.

I hate you.

She’s deliberately stopping me from finding out. I can’t let her.

Alice is looking straight at me this time. ‘Presents,’ she says to me. ‘I have presents. And you have presents.’ And I can see behind her that that’s true.

That rush of love again. That’s constant. I try to feel what’s natural and not be stiff and scary about it, and give her a big hug. ‘Does Daddy have presents?’

She looks aside, squirms; she doesn’t know how to deal with that. Have I warned her about me? I don’t want to press her for answers. I don’t want to distress her.

I need to keep going and find out.

I’m facing in the same direction, so it’s like the decor and contents of the room suddenly shift, just a little. Alice, in front of me, four now, is running in rings on the floor, obviously in the middle of, rather than anticipating something, so that’s good.

Ben comes in. He’s alive! Oh thank God.

I stand up at the sight of him. Has she told him about me? No, I never would. He looks so different. He’s clean shaven, smartly dressed. Did he go on a long journey somewhere? He hoists Alice into his arms and Alice laughs as he jumbles up her hair. ‘Happy Christmas birthday!’

Alice sings it back to him, like it’s a thing they do together. So… everything’s all right? Why didn’t she want me to—?

A young woman I don’t know comes in from the other room. She goes to Ben and puts a hand on his arm. Alice smiles at her.

‘We have to be gee oh aye en gee soon,’ he says to me.

‘Thanks for lunch,’ says the girl. ‘It was lovely.’

The fury this time is my own. But it chimes with what’s inside this mind. She’s been holding it down. I take a step forward. And the young woman sees something in my eyes and takes a step back. And that little movement—

No, it isn’t the movement, it isn’t what she does, this is all me—

I march towards her. I’m taking in every feature of her. Every beautiful feature of that slightly aristocratic, kind-looking, caring face. I’m making a sound I’ve never heard before in the back of my throat. ‘Get away from him. Get your hands off him.’

She’s trying to put up her hands and move away. She’s astonished. ‘I’m sorry—!’

‘What the hell?!’ Ben is staring at us. Alice has started yelling. Fearful monkey warning shouts.

Something gives inside me. I rush at her. She runs.

I catch her before she gets to the door. I grab her by both arms and throw her at the wall. I’m angry at her and at the mind I’m in too. Did she set me up for this?! Did she invite them here to punish me?! So she could let her anger out and not be responsible?!

She hits the wall and bounces off it. She falls, grabbing her nose. She looks so capable and organised I know she could hit me hard, I know she could defend herself, but she just drops to the ground and puts her hands to her face. I will not make her fight. She can control herself and I can’t.

Ben rushes in and grabs me. I don’t want him to touch me. I struggle.

‘What are you doing?!’ He’s shouting at me.

I can feel this mind burning up. If I stay much longer, I’ll start damaging it. I half want to.

I ripped the crown from my head and threw it onto the ground. I burst into tears. I put my hands on my belly to comfort myself. But I found no comfort there.

But my pain wasn’t important. It wasn’t! The mistakes I’d made were what was important. What happened to Alice, that was what was important.

I got up and walked around the room. If I stopped now, I was thinking, the rest of my life would be a tragedy, I would be forever anticipating what was written, or trying… hopelessly, yes, there was nothing in the research then that said I had any hope… to change it. I would be living without hope. I could do that. But the important thing was what that burden would do to Alice… If I was going to be allowed to keep Alice, after what I’d seen.

I could go to the airport now. I could leave Ben asleep, while he was still my Ben, and have the baby in France, and break history… No I couldn’t. Something would get me back to what I’d seen. Maybe something cosmic and violent that wouldn’t respect the human mind’s need for narrative. That was what the maths said. Alice shouldn’t have that in her life. Alice shouldn’t have me in her life.

But the me who wrote the first note wanted me not to try to visit the future again. When she knew I had. Did she think that was possible? Did I learn something in the next year that hinted that it might be? Why didn’t I address that in future notes?

Because of anger? Because of fatalism? Because of a desire to hurt myself?

But… if there was even a chance it might be possible…

I slowly squatted and picked up the crown.

I’ve moved. I’m in a different house. Smaller. I walk quickly through the rooms, searching. I have to support myself against the wall in relief when I see Alice. There she is, in her own room, making a wall out of cardboard wrapping-paper rolls. Still the love in me. I don’t think that’s ever going to go. It feels like… a condition. A good disease this mind lives with. But what’s she doing alone in here? Did I make her flee here, exile her here?

She looks up at me and smiles. No. No, I didn’t.

I find the note this time on the kitchen table. It’s quite long, it’s apologetic. It tells me straight away that Ben and… Jessica, the young woman’s name is Jessica… understood quite quickly after I left her mind and she started apologising. She apologises too for not doing anything to stop what happened. But she says she really wasn’t setting me up for it. She says she’s still working at the Project. She says she’s still looking for a way to change time, but hasn’t much hope of finding one.

I put down the letter feeling… hatred. For her. For her weakness. For her acceptance. That whole letter feels like… acting. Like she’s saying something because she thinks she should.

From the other room comes the sound of Alice starting to cry. She’s hurt herself somehow. I feel the urge from this mind to go immediately to her. But I… I actually hesitate. For the first time there is a distance. I’m a stranger from years ago. This isn’t really my child. This is her child.